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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26397940">What Kind Of Thief</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyofRaven/pseuds/RubyofRaven'>RubyofRaven</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>These Kids Need Therapy (Drabbles) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Descendants (Disney Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Emotions, First Meetings, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Heroism, Male Friendship, Minor Original Character(s), Morality, Post-Descendants (2015), Protective Jay (Disney), Therapy, introspective</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:41:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,737</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26397940</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyofRaven/pseuds/RubyofRaven</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jay’s therapist likes talking about his relationships. Today she wants to talk about Carlos.</p><p><i>Where did you meet?</i> she asks, leaning back in her smooth white chair. Everything about this office is smooth and neutral and fucking pristine.</p><p>Or</p><p>A snapshot about Jay, Carlos, Fairy Godmother-mandated therapy, and how friendship and stealing are kind of essentially the same thing</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jay &amp; Carlos De Vil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>These Kids Need Therapy (Drabbles) [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925335</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>89</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What Kind Of Thief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! </p><p>My beautiful and brilliant friend Ruby of Raven has graciously posted this fic on her account for me. She’s been incredibly helpful and supportive, so shout out to her! This is a short character study about Jay and how his views on friendship and, to some degree, morality are shaped from growing up on the Isle - because formative environments have impacts on a person’s worldviews, even when they are now living in a different environment, and reconciling the values taught in those separate environments can be complex. </p><p>Disclaimer, I do not own Descendants or any of its characters, plot events, etc.</p><p>Thank you for reading.</p><p>- MMR</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jay’s therapist likes to talk about the Isle.</p><p>(Yes, Jay has a therapist.)</p><p>She likes to talk about gang activity, parental neglect, malnutrition– anything that makes the prissy privileged Auradonians gasp or look at him with pity - but not guilt. No one ever seems guilty about what happened, about what they <i>allowed</i> to happen.</p><p>And Jay can’t even be mad about it, because their lack of guilt for causing suffering? That, that is the closest damn thing to familiarity he has in this place.</p><p>Violence, neglect, hunger – yeah, Jay experienced those things, but on the Isle that doesn’t make you need a therapist (not that there are any). On the Isle, that makes you average – and, compared to a lot of the kids on the Isle, Jay was freaking well adjusted. But life on the Isle objectively sucks and Jay does not intend to go back there. So, he needs to adjust to life here and learn how to act like an Auradonian -he needs to learn how to not treat eye contact like aggression, and that sometimes there is nothing behind a smile but friendliness - and Fairy Godmother has decided that a therapist is the answer to that. </p><p> (So, yeah, he’s in therapy.)</p><p>His therapist also likes talking about his relationships. Today she wants to talk about Carlos.</p><p><i>Where did you meet?</i> she asks, leaning back in her smooth white chair. Everything about this office is smooth and neutral and fucking pristine.</p><p>Talking about Carlos in Auradon would be easy. Talking about Carlos on the Isle, not so much. On the Isle, it was best not to talk about Carlos – to keep his mother away it was better to say nothing. Who knew what cracks and holes Jasper and Horace were listening at, or what street rat would sell overheard information for a few scraps?</p><p>Jay slouches down and moves to rest his foot on his opposite knee. It’s a confident gesture, and he hopes he smears dirt or sweat on to the chair he’s sitting in, anything to prove that actual humans were in this sterile room.</p><p><i>In the marketplace by the harbor</i>, he says.</p><p>Jay remembers he had just scored a bunch of apples and a loaf of bread from one of the stalls. The barges were late that month, and food was getting hard to come by. He remembers hearing the vendor shout after him. He remembers running, dodging other shoppers and thieves, ducking around carts and stalls. He dove into a side alley, his spoils in his arms and a triumphant grin on his face.</p><p>
  <i>I almost tripped over him.</i>
</p><p>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p>Jay caught himself with a hand against the wall, the other scrambling to keep the food from falling onto the muddy ground. The boy didn’t look like much. Dirty and frail, tiny and curled against the wall in a loose crouch. Just another wharf rat – the unnamed children of unnamed henchmen and whores – skinny and bruised and cowering in corners. The shortage was rough on everyone, but Jay was strong enough, fast enough – his father’s name feared enough – to hold his own. This kid wasn’t so lucky, too tired to even try to make a move for the food in the market, much less challenge Jay for what he carried.</p><p>Jay could have left him, Jay <i>was&gt;/i&gt; going to leave him, but when he pushed away from the wall, the kid didn’t cringe back like most of the wharf rats would – they were always cutting or cringing, no in between – and this kid was clearly too exhausted for a knife fight. He just stared up at Jay with these big eyes. Big brown eyes that seemed to swallow his gaunt face, not pleading or scared – just assessing. Jay shifted and one of the apples rolled further down into the cradle of his forearm. The boy’s eyes followed it – hungry, but not desperate from it.</i></p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p>
  <i></i>
</p><p>Jay made an impulsive decision.</p><p><i>C’mon</i>, he said, and began to walk down the alley. The dark eyes followed him, weighing, before the skinny body rose to trail silently behind him. Out in the cloudy daylight, Jay was able to make out more features – hair shockingly white even beneath the grime, faint freckles peeking around scratches and scuffs.</p><p><i>Whose are you?</i> Jay asked.</p><p><i>Cruella’s</i>, the boy said.</p><p>Huh, not a wharf rat then. He didn’t look like a big-name villain’s kid, though. None of the villains were particularly protective of their children, but they were possessive. If you had the name and power to keep people from taking your stuff, you did. Jay knew, the whole Isle knew, that Cruella guarded her furs viciously. She guarded all her possessions that way, locked up tight in Hell Hall - all but her child it seemed.</p><p>Maybe the boy was useless, if Cruella cared too little to keep him. But as Jay watched the boy’s intelligent eyes and careful, near silent steps, he could see that there was something interesting in this boy. Something that might be valuable.</p><p>And, well, Jay was a thief. He wasn’t going to let an opportunity to steal something pass up – especially not an easy steal like this.</p><p><i>Not anymore</i>, Jay said.</p><p>
  <i>I’m Jay.</i>
</p><p>The boy stayed silent for long minutes as they continued down the street.</p><p><i>Carlos</i>, he finally said.</p><p>Jay brought him to the hideout. He gave him a bruised apple and tore off a moldy hunk of bread. The kid – Carlos –  approached cautiously, but when he was close enough, he swiped the food out of Jay’s hand with impressive reflexes. Jay watched him out of the corner of his eye as he ate the apple in fast bites and hid the bread under his shirt. Jay nodded in approval. Smart kid.</p><p>Carlos looked up from his apple core and scanned the hideout. His eyes lingered on the old radio in the corner that Jay had scavenged off one of the barges a few months back. It didn’t work, but most of the parts seemed to be intact. Jay had been messing with it in his down time trying to pick up a music station of some kind. The kid approached it slowly, side eyeing Jay the whole way. Carlos paused before touching it – hand out-stretched, lingering mid-air. Jay met his eyes and shrugged. The kid picked the radio up and started to fiddle with it. Jay sat on the couch and made himself comfortable half-watching the kid while he waited for Mal to show up.</p><p>When she came through the door half an hour later, Mal paused at the sight of the boy. Jay could see her anger grow, waited for the green flash in her eyes as she drew herself up. Jay straightened in his seat, readying for a fight. But before either of them could utter a syllable, the tension dissipated with a burst of static and the fuzzy sound of some peppy Auradon song about dancing and dreams. Mal and Jay both turned to see Carlos sitting in the corner, the radio cradled in his hands. He froze as their eyes fell on him.</p><p><i>Well</i>, Mal said looking impressed and grudgingly approving as she regarded the quietly humming radio.</p><p>
  <i>Whose is he?</i>
</p><p>Jay stood straight; shoulders pulled back in pride – he knew the boy was valuable.</p><p><i>Mine</i>, he said.</p><p>Carlos didn’t smile then. Just cocked his head and stared at Jay before going back to fiddling with the radio. But the next time Jay said it, after chasing off a bunch of Uma’s pirates who’d cornered Carlos between a couple buildings, he did. It was small, his facial muscles tense like he hadn’t tried it before – but it lit up the fucking alleyway brighter than the water-logged sun ever managed to.</p><p>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p><i>So that’s how you became friends?</i> his therapist asks.</p><p><i>That’s how I stole him</i>, Jay says.</p><p>She frowns, like he’s in class and has given the wrong answer again. Jay’s therapist thinks he has a <i>latent hero-complex that was repressed in his early childhood due to environmental factors and was subsequently expressed through actions he deluded himself into believing were stealing in the name of self-preservation.<i></i></i></p><p>
  <i>
    <i></i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i></i>
  </i>
</p><p><i>It sounds to me like you rescued him</i>, she says.</p><p>
  <i>Remember, we’ve talked about the difference between stealing and saving.</i>
</p><p>She finds it <i>a worrying habit that he insists on calling his heroic actions stealing as it casts him perpetually as the antagonist in his own life.</i></p><p>Jay tries not to scoff.</p><p>Jay will admit that he needs therapy for a lot of reasons if he is going to adjust to living in Auradon – but stealing and hero-complexes don’t fall into it.</p><p>Heroics didn’t exist on the Isle and, to be real, they don’t exist in Auradon either. These days the closest they get to it is tourney – and that’s about physical prowess and the glory of winning. Don’t get him wrong, Jay isn’t judging – he’s perfectly fine with glory and prowess. He’s just not under the illusion that tourney has anything to do with a higher cause or saving anyone or selflessness.</p><p>Contrary to popular opinion, Jay’s got a pretty solid idea of what heroism is. And he certainly knows what stealing is. He was raised in it, lived it, breathed it, turned it into a god-damned art form. Jay didn’t rescue Carlos. He wasn’t moved with pity or some need to sacrifice himself for a greater cause or ideal. He saw something valuable, decided he wanted it, and he took it. That’s stealing. The Isle or Auradon, it makes no difference. He’s never been ashamed of stealing on the Isle and, even though he’s stopped doing it here in Auradon, he’s never going to be ashamed.</p><p>One thing Jay is certain about since talking things over in therapy, ironically, is that not all stealing is bad. Yeah, he’s pretty sure both Auradon and the Isle would be scandalized at that thought.</p><p>
  <i>It’s also a detrimental mindset to say you stole Carlos because it reduces Carlos to an object – like one of the things you would resell in your father’s shop</i>, his therapist says.
</p><p>Jay tries not to scoff at that either. Like he’d ever let Carlos close to his dad’s shop – like he’d ever be careless enough for someone to take Carlos from him. Jay doesn’t give back what he steals, and he’s not careless with things valuable enough to keep.</p><p>What kind of thief do they think he is?</p>
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